6.06.2014

Only 1% of the world's vast water supplies are freshwater. There is no new water, we drink the same water the dinosaurs did. Yet everyday we allow the fracking industry to murder freshwater by pumping it into the ground with a chemical soup that makes the water un-useable forever. A new report, 'Fracking by the Numbers', calculates that 280 billion gallons of toxic wastewater was generated by fracking in 2012 -- enough to flood all of Washington, D.C., in a 22-foot deep toxic lagoon.

Studies by Harvard and the EPA both conclude that the amount of water needed to drill and fracture a horizontal shale gas well generally ranges from about 2 million to 4 million gallons, depending on the basin and formation characteristics. The total number of fracked wells in the US is very difficult to ascertain for a variety of reasons though the 'Fracking by the Numbers' report found that fracking has occurred in at least 17 states with about 82,000 wells operating nationally. Worldwide the total is a well concealed mystery but it's staggering.

In Canada nobody knows for sure how many fracked wells there are or how much non-renewable fresh water is being destroyed. Why not? Well it's not in either the industry or the government's interest to know because it can only be negative headlines and bad news in their opinions. Ecojustice is in court trying to find out. When asked: "How much water does fracking use in BC?" The Ecojustice spokesman says, "No one knows for sure. This means that the regulator and the public do not know for certain how much water has been taken, and from where, at any given time. The Commission now requires self-reporting by companies for approvals but this does not capture all water use by the oil and gas industry." One BC specific website i found, STOP FRACKING BRITISH COLUMBIA - DEATH BY A THOUSAND FRACKS, has some good articles and links to more info.

As the documentary 'Last Call at the Oasis' - a frightening look at the global water crisis - explains, 90% of the freshwater humans use currently goes to agriculture, much of that at the expense of aquifers whose levels are dropping faster every year as we race to build bigger pumps that reach deeper. Watching this doc. on CBC recently touched me deeply because, like the climate, the weather and the air we breath, water connects us all. 'Last Call at the Oasis' starts out somewhat as an extension of another great book and movie, 'Cadillac Desert', that nearly 20 years ago focused on our culture's abusive and unconscious waste of this most precious and irreplaceable resource.

Where irrigation depends on aquifers We are depending on fossil water that is also effectively a non-renewable resource, Water tables are falling by several feet per year in many parts of the developing world dependent on groundwater sources, notably beneath rapidly growing urban centres with an insatiable demand for water, but also beneath agricultural regions. With a liquid treasure below their feet and a global market eager for their products, farmers here and around the developed world have made a Faustian bargain - giving up long-term conservation for short-term gain. To capitalize on economic opportunities, landowners are knowingly “mining” a finite resource.

For instance, the Ogallala Aquifer, the vast underground reservoir that gives life to the breadbasket of Ameria - the region that supplies at least one fifth of the total annual U.S. agricultural harvest. If the aquifer goes dry, more than $20 billion worth of food and fiber will vanish from the world. In some places, the groundwater is already gone.and scientists say it will take natural processes 6,000 years to refill the Ogallala….

Where the Colorado River ends and no longer reaches the ocean.

Another example: For six million years, the Colorado River ran its course from its soaring origins in the Rockies to a once-teeming two-million-acre delta, finally emptying 14 million acre-feet of fresh water into the Sea of Cortez. But now, a multitude of straws are drinking from the river….Indeed, the Colorado River has not reached the sea since 1998 but ends rather in a cracked and desolate expanse of barren mud flats and abandoned boats - a dry river cemetery.

As Raúl Ilargi Meijer explains in 'Physical Limits to Food Security: Water and Climate', "Our relentless human expansion is running up against hard, non-negotiable limits to food security, which is already threatened in so many places. Our current extractive methods amount to a draw down of natural capital, allowing us to feed (most of) ourselves today, but in highly wasteful ways which are already compromising our ability to feed ourselves and our descendants tomorrow. Those in a position to do so chase short term economic gain at the expense of burning through non-renewable resources in ways which clearly make no sense with respect to any logic other than short term economic benefit. Those at the other end of the financial food chain also prioritize what could, in a sense, be called short term gain, but for them is in fact a matter of short term survival."

Even more frightening is the fact that most of the data used in these studies and reports was collected before the worldwide fracking insanity really started to gain momentum. Fracking is about the most suicidal thing humans have come up with so far. The next couple Mud Reports will focus on how fracked gas actually is the dirtiest GHG polluter because of the widespread methane leakage and why the various governments refuse to look into the facts being exposed almost everyday by new scientific reports.

La Via Campesina is the international movement which brings together millions of peasants, small and medium-size farmers, landless people, women farmers, indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers from around the world. It defends small-scale sustainable agriculture as a way to promote social justice and dignity. It strongly opposes corporate driven agriculture and transnational companies that are destroying people and nature.

Sitting Up Mud

"Bokonon made mud. Bokonon said to some of the mud, "Sit up!" "See all I've made, the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars."

And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud. I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job Bokonon had done.

"Nice going, Bokonon. Nobody but you could have done it, I certainly couldn't have. I feel very unimportant compared to You. The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around. I got so much, and most mud got so little. Thank you for the honor!"

Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep. What memories for mud to have! "What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met! I loved everything I saw! Good night. Amen."

Quotes

"Our dreams draw us foward, as water whispers to the dowser's wand."- Tony Cohan

"Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide." - Tom Robbins

"Politics is how you live your life, not who you vote for!" -Jerry Rubin

"The pencil is mightier than the pen"- Robert Pirsig

"Resist much, obey little." -Walt Whitman

When the axe came into the woods, many of the trees said, “At least the handle is one of us.” — Turkish proverb

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction" - Pascal

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

Translate

Theism?

Flying Spagetti Monster Church

The single greatest service each of us can provide to our planet, our families and ourselves is to grow our own organic food from heritage seeds. Then to save our own seed in turn, and in so doing be part of the future solution to the present day destruction being sown by GMO's, agri-business and the bio-technology giants. - Bob Wiley